Since my in-laws gave me a copy of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek shortly after its publication in 1974, I have been a fan of Annie Dillard, especially her nonfiction, including An American Childhood and The Writing Life. I've just finished the book she claims will be her last, The Maytrees, a novel. Set mainly in Provincetown, it is the story of Toby Maytree, his wife Lou, and the free spirited architect Deary Hightoe who sleeps in the dunes. Toby falls in love with Deary (though I'm not sure his motivation for this sudden turn of events is adequately shown), and they retreat to Maine, leaving behind Lou and the son, Petey. Twenty years later they both return to Provincetown in dire straights, in need of help from none other than the painter Lou, who has made a life on her own in their absence. The book is a meditation on love, its inscrutability, how it can clash with the individual's urge for independence and space. But it's also about Cape Cod and the distinctive, isolated culture that peculiar geography has spawned--the dune shacks, the weather, the sand, the protection of the bay versus the more tempestuous ocean side. Given Dillard's metaphoric flair, it's hard not to see in these two sides of the slender finger of Cape Cod some reflection of two opposing human tendencies--the enclosure and safely of the protected water and its staid houses vs. the ravages of the Atlantic, the shifting dunes, the tenuousness of the now-protected beach shacks. Dillard's writing here is as usual suffused with observation about the natural world. The book brings to mind Henry Beston's classic memoir of his season alone on the Cape in The Outermost House (also a book my in-laws Jack and Jane Debes introduced me to).~~~
Reviews of The Maytrees from Digital Emunction/News
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By Diane Leach, a review I agree with in January Magazine
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